8 
very considerable collection of the illustrations planned for this 
iconography. 
The volume published, dedicated to one of the finest of Colom- 
bia’s scholars and statesmen, Michael A. Caro, after a brief 
geological introduction, divides into three portions. The first 
part, the therapeutic flora, runs over the vegetation of the 
country, for the dicotyledons family by family, listing the best- 
known and especially the medicinal species, and making for each 
some entry of locality and of medicinal use. Often the latter 
entries are quite full, and while I am little qualified to judge, I 
should suppose that this is a mine of valuable observations. 
The monocotyledons and higher cryptogams are not so fully 
entered, although he has much to say of these. An industrial 
flora follows on pages 132 to 151, similar in treatment but much 
briefer. To me in my travels in remote sections of the country 
the most valuable portion of the book is the third, the “index” 
of the common names of the plants used in Colombia. This 
embraces pages 153 to 275, and is much more than an index. 
Each entry contains the scientific name of the species, and very 
generally notes of occurrence and uses. In a country where 
physicians and medicines are rare and few, the people pay that 
close attention to the flora which must have characterized the 
English in the times when our wealth of English names came into 
being, and so it is but natural to find almost every Colombiano 
well versed in plant names. To a novice, Cortés’ index was 
indeed a key to the more important part of the flora. 
Now a word as to Sefior Cortés himself. In Spanish America, 
Colombia has been remarkable and unique in the long series of 
lonely or nearly lonely botanists which she has produced. It 
seems to be in line with the peculiar merit of Colombia’s culture, 
in certain ways the finest, though not the greatest or at all the 
most broadly diffused, in the Spanish New World. First there 
was Mutis, the monk who came with Spanish training and afire 
with enthusiasm to explore the botanical unknown of New 
Granada’s river-valleys and mountain-chains. Then there was 
Caldas, the patriot-martyr, a botanist as well as physicist, one 
of the minds of greatest scientific promise that the New World has 
